


Like A Riot (Don't Need Order)

by jane_potter



Series: The Riotverse [1]
Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, Dubious Consent, M/M, Sexual Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-04
Updated: 2010-09-04
Packaged: 2017-10-11 11:22:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/111879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jane_potter/pseuds/jane_potter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a universe where first contact with Earth in the throes of World War III repulsed Vulcan too much for them to consider an alliance, the Terran-Orion Union is the terror of the black, their Starfleet branch maintaining relations with a facade of neutrality while Syndicate ships raid and kidnap slaves. Smaller worlds hide in the so-called Free Space behind Vulcan's blockade, but 250 years isolated from any kind of emotional influence has left Vulcan law stagnant and cold to the plight of other peoples. Doing what's right is neither legal or logical. Jim Kirk and S'chn T'gai Spock are both pretty okay with that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like A Riot (Don't Need Order)

**Author's Note:**

> Somebody on my LJ flist (related to my flist?) wrote pirates!AU. EDIT: [Looking For A Place To Happen](http://waketosleep.dreamwidth.org/17335.html). I realised immediately how much the world needed more of this kind of thing. And thus, the magnum opus that I may not finish for another two or thirty years, the Riotverse began.

There was something to be said for a club that had enforcers rather than bouncers. As for entry, just a flash of the weapons-check chip at the door did the trick. Jim's only (illegal) identification was Union, and nobody smart carried Union ID around _that _deep into the red light district of a Vulcan city, even an outworlders-only shuttle hub like Sdvaar. Not that the check chip meant that Jim had surrendered _all _of his weapons, of course-- just those that showed beneath his jacket. All in all, the place just reeked of class. It went along nicely with the hot stickiness of sweat and booze pouring off the dance floor.

Keeping his entry low key, Jim scanned the seething dance floor with narrowed eyes as he prowled around the edge of the club, slipping through shadows thrown by the catwalks crisscrossing up two stories overhead. Light bounced off his face too fast to do anything but dazzle, lasers and strobes flashing in time with the music's frenetic beat. The bass already had him buzzed to his bones, huge and heavy like the _thump _of a photon torpedo's launch reverberating through a ship. The leather of his jacket was trapping perspiration against his skin already, clinging to him tight over shoulders still tense with the stress of the latest run.

God, he needed to get laid. In the last few months he'd been fucked practically every way but literally.

At last, satisfied with the mood of the place and its patrons, Jim made himself relax a bit. Clearly they were just civilians, crew of freighters and passenger liners, thinking they were perfectly safe and displaying their vulnerability all over the place. Easing his hand off the polymer knife hidden in his belt buckle, he strolled over towards to the bar.

By the time Jim reached the bar, he had slipped on a casual smile as easily as he slipped himself into the space next to an attractive yellow female wearing too few clothes to possibly be concealing any weaponry. "Is it polite to buy a girl a drink on your world?" he drawled, already flicking two fingers at the bartender, and let the night begin.

She was pretty, she was responsive, and she warmed up to him quickly. Apparently they came in pairs, and the pairs travelled in groups, because within half and hour Jim found himself seated at the bar surrounded by daffodil-skinned aliens and a considerable collection of empty shot glasses. He couldn't quite remember which one was the first girl, though it turned out not to matter: they traded off easy for a turn each on the dance floor, turning into a blur of soft chin tendrils caressing his neck and grass-scented sweaty flesh sliding slippery up against him. More than one was probably male, not that Jim cared at that point what kind of body he was grinding with. They all made the same kittenish sounds when he slid his thumbs down beneath the pebble-skinned base of the tail and stroked.

"You speak good Standard," one of the males said at the bar eight songs later, as Jim was downing his fourth shot. Jim made an distracted agreement in his direction, chasing the last of the whiskey out of his glass. "Do you have any Union friends?" the alien persisted, leaning in on Jim's arm. "Do you know anybody? I'm trying to get a citizenship."

"Good luck," Jim told him brusquely, suddenly sour, and turned away. He hadn't searched out the cheapest, loosest bar on Vulcan just to get dragged back into what he'd come looking to escape. "Bartender, 'nother two of these!"

"I need a citizenship," the male continued anxiously. He slipped off his stool and moved up close behind Jim, plucking timidly at the back of his jacket with long quadruple-jointed fingers. Jim bit back a curse and ground his teeth, trying to hold his temper. "Can you help me? I have to get into Union space, my job--"

Jim slammed back his next drink, surged to his feet and pivoted around abruptly in one swift movement. "You listening? I said good luck. You'll need it. The Starshit border patrol around Terran space isn't exactly full of holes these days."

Snatching up another glass from the bar without caring whether it was his or not, Jim shouldered his way out of the surprised ground of yellows and stalked away. Behind pinched lips, Jim's alcohol-soaked mouth was suddenly sour like infection and worm pus festering in three day-old gashes, the stench of Pike's wounds gone septic clinging in his throat.

_"We can't fly forever, Jim," Pike rasped, his glassy eyes sunken with fever and exhaustion, sweat matting his receding hair against his leather-tough face. He looked like he was disappearing into the size of the biobed, all of him crumpled, broken. "I'm an old man, I know that. You'd better learn it."_

Riled up and suddenly restless, Jim raked his eyes down the bar, searching for the closest available distraction. Without giving a flying fuck about just whose party he was crashing, he pushed himself into a likely-looking huddle with a loud scoff of, "Please, string theory was bullshit even when the packaging was still shiny and new."

By the time all faces had turned towards him, startled, Jim had already slid his ass onto the edge of the table and started dashing out notes on the PADD the group had been debating over. Engineers dabbling in armchair astrophysics, it looked like, and drunk enough that a couple of boozy complex calculations could probably sucker them. Good enough.

"You a scientist?" one asked, craning his neck to peer at Jim's flying stylus.

"Astrophysicist with a major in interstellar navigation," Jim lied flawlessly, and his arrogant smirk didn't give away a hint of the thoughts about a white-faced Sulu keeping his bloody hands on the helm and piloting the _Number One_ through hell with a broken shard of his console's panelling rammed deep into his side, silence and stoicism beaten into him since the age of three. "See, it's all really simple if you just invert the radicals and..."

Somewhere between the second shouting match and the third frantic detour to the dance floor, Jim lost count of his drinks. He mostly stopped drinking, then. Most of the _Number One_'s crew had scattered out all over Sdvaar the second they'd docked, leaving just Uhura aboardship for the night in case of emergency. Jim remembered the dark circles under Uhura's exhausted eyes, the sallowness of her skin, and fuck if he was gonna wake her up from the first real sleep she'd had in weeks just to beam his drunk ass back onboard. He'd already had enough alcohol to pretend that he didn't mind the indignity of being held down on somebody's lap like a cheap prostitute, or the clumsy paw groping his ass. The touch was too hard and it hurt, but not that much.

"In fact," Jim announced loudly, slurring a bit, "not only does phylogeny _recapitulate _ontogeny, it can't exist _without _it."

The smooth voice from behind, _far _too near to his ear, made him stiffen. "Oh, I would beg to differ."

Jim twisted around in the engineer's lap, pushing the paw away to turn enough to get a good look at the stranger. His eyebrows, already raised in challenge, shot higher at the sight that greeted him.

Tall, lean, and sinewy as a panther, the guy was leaning against the bar on one elbow, probably just waiting for the bartender's attention but looking more as if he was running for badass motherfucker of the year. Sheathed in black leather, his legs went on for fucking _miles _and ended in small-toed boots that zipped up tight around his shins; on the way back up, Jim's eyes trailed over narrow hips and up to a broader chest and shoulders in a sleek leather jacket with pilot's insignia on the shoulders. The rank was probably fake, considering it was Orion, but the all of the leather was genuine, and more importantly it carried the scars and scuffs of hard work.

The eyebrows and ears said alien; specifically, vulcanoid. The hair, severely cut across the forehead, said Vulcan. The face... ivory skinned, cheeks swept with bronze-green powder, dramatic black eyes done sharp and catlike in black liner and green shadow, lips bright emerald and slanted with a mocking smirk... the face was too vibrant to be anything but Romulan, and just about pretty enough to make Jim not give a damn. Only reason he cared in the first place was because one species would want to call him on the bullshit he'd been spouting, and the other would likely want to cut his head off and drag his body back inside the Neutral Zone for the bounty.

"And you'd be right to," Jim agreed, shoving away the engineer's possessive arm until he could get to his feet. As he stepped closer, ignoring the engineer's protests, the vulanoid leaned back into his own space. "Differ, I mean. Considering you're apparently the only one here smart enough to know that, what exactly _are _you doing _here_?"

"What one always does in a place like this," the vulcanoid said sardonically. "Drinking. Deep Forge Mudtrap, neat," he added to the bartender droid that had just hovered over.

Jim gestured. "Make it two. His is on me."

The alien looked him up and down, his eyes lingering without shame on Jim's chest. Jim put an elbow against the bar in mirror of the vulcanoid's pose and stretched slightly, smirking. Looking pleased, the vulcanoid eyed his obligingly displayed abs for a bit longer.

"You like spending your evenings screwing with drunk gruntworkers?" he asked eventually.

Jim shrugged casually while thinking at the same time, _Romulan. Definitely Romulan_. Despite the danger, he played it cool, drawling, "Well, you know... only thing in this place I don't gotta pay to screw."

"Hey, you know what--" The abandoned engineer yanked at Jim's arm, sending him stumbling back a step or two. "You think you can just just tease me all night and then ditch me for the first alien slut that so much as looks at you?"

Jim smiled through his teeth, wondering if the man had any idea just how easily Jim could put a knife between his ribs. "Um, yeah? Look, face it, cupcake: you're not exactly a prize."

"You stuck up son of a--"

Holding a handful of Cupcake's shirt in a tight fist that dragged him halfway out of his chair, the Romulan leaned in close to his face and suggested very calmly, "Shut up."

When he was dropped unceremoniously back down, Cupcake's chair rocked so far that he nearly went sprawling all the way to the ground. He barely recovered, tipping half a mug of beer all over himself while scrambling for a grip on the edge of the table. The other engineers pushed out of the way and yanked their own drinks to safety, laughing. Jim figured that he had danced dirty with enough of them that they wouldn't feel like beating up on him, but...

Before Cupcake could surge to his feet again, Jim's hand was at his belt buckle, pulling the concealed knife out enough to bare three inches of blade. Suddenly dead sober, Cupcake looked from Jim's cheerful smile to the Romulan's arrogant eyebrow and, after a tense silence, seemed to think better of a fight. He sunk back into his chair and turned away, hunching over his spilled drink.

"I could have handled that," Jim told the Romulan, sheathing his knife again.

The alien watched him adjust his belt buckle, idly appreciating the view. One corner of his mouth curled up in a smirk. "I thought that you were the one being _handled _earlier, actually, and I wasn't under the impression that you wanted to handle _him, _either."

"Well, since you spared me _that_, is there something else you'd rather I handled, then?"

The Romulan only crooked an eyebrow at him as their drinks arrived. Jim sniffed his, getting an unmistakable whiff of chocolate from the glistening dark concoction. Tipping the glass, he asked, "So what is this, anyway?"

The Romulan enjoyed a slow sip of his own, eyes half lidded in evident pleasure, before answering. "One part chocolate milk, two parts dark chocolate liqueur, and a dash of chocolate syrup, stirred, not shaken." Running a lazy eye over Jim once again, he added eventually, "Smooth going all the way down."

Jim smirked. "I'll bet it's not the only thing. Is it a Vulcan creation?"

A derisive snort. "No. It's mine."

"And thus bringing us ever closer to the thus far elusive subject of your name. Why isn't it called after you? I'm sure you've got a great one."

After a considering pause, the alien offered, "Salik."

Not bad, as far as alien names went; at least Jim could actually pronounce it. There were some truly hideous ones. It sounded Vulcan, though, which was even more confusing. "I'm Tyler." And he was, at least according to the (illegal) ID he wasn't carrying. Unlike Sulu, he wasn't a fucking ninja and usually stuck with just one fake ID at a time, at least until that name's welcome had been worn out in enough sectors. "Nice to meet you."

With a smug grin, he held out his hand; Salik looked amused for a moment before he took it. The hot, dry palm against Jim's was hard with calluses. Funny, seeing as both Romulans and Vulcans tended to keep their hands soft as _lilies_; even most Romulan soldiers wore gloves. But Salik's tough hand had strength-- and, catching Jim's eyes, he squeezed tighter before loosening his grip. Jim's breath caught at the intense look in Salik's eyes as the Romulan slowly trailed his long fingers across Jim's palm, stroking each and every joint of his fingers before withdrawing his hand entirely with a last tiny twist of fingertips to fingertips.

"Ty'hllr," Salik repeated, tasting the syllables slow and low in a way that made Jim's pants tighten a bit. Evidently noticing the effect his voice had on Jim, Salik rumbled again, "Ty'hllr," the word dropping down deep into his chest and catching on something that made it a goddamn _growl_.

"Don't wear it out," Jim said, his heart beating a touch faster, "unless you'd rather I really made you scream it."

Salik leaned in and fucking _sniffed _his neck, nosetip so close to Jim's throat that the tiny hairs on his neck shivered and stood up. "I'd rather you screamed mine," he said softly, "as I promise it's less likely to be exhausted."

The nasty prickle down Jim's spine made him turn away against the bar to put some space between them. He knocked back half his drink. "We'll see."

Most days it seemed like every Klingon warrior, Romulan soldier, Orion pirate and Terran officer in the galaxy wanted to make him scream, and Jim had had more than his share of run ins with them all. It was a point of pride that every single one that had ever succeeded hadn't lived to talk about it.

Salik reached out and thumbed a smear of chocolate from the corner of Jim's mouth, putting his thumb between his own emerald lips to suck it off. His eyes were smouldering. "Like it?"

There was a long moment where Jim wondered vaguely if it was really smart to keep playing cat and mouse with a Romulan that potentially had seen his face on one of the countless wanted posters currently plastered all over the alpha quadrant. His captain-- _former _captain-- was crippled, the rest of the crew was exhausted, some had no doubt already deserted, the _One_ was hardly spaceworthy let alone warp capable, and there was no money to hire anybody, make repairs or bribe his way out of any kind of trouble.

Then he decided he was carrying enough weaponry to handle anything and thought, _Fuck it_. A problem that he could solve with a simple fist to the face was more than welcome.

"Delicious," he replied, answering either of the double entendre's meanings. "Mudtrap, huh?"

The sleek line of Salik's throat was fucking erotic as he tipped his head back to take another long swallow. Reclining against the bar once more, he asked, "Do you know what that is?"

"Not a clue. Educate me."

The tip of Salik's tongue peeked between his lips as he licked them clean. Surrounded by dark shimmering green, his eyes were intense. "In the Vulcan Forge, there are no clean wellsprings," he murmured, "only underground fissures that leak sulphurous mineral water. It never quite reaches the surface, instead forming hidden pools of hot, lethal quicksand."

Jim's breathing quickened slightly at the deep timbre of Salik's voice. He began to lean in despite himself, entranced more by the Romulan's glistening green lips than his words.

"Every now and then, an unwary animal will wander into one of these traps," Salik continued in his deep, deceptively soft voice, and shifted closer. Jim shivered. "It quickly becomes caught, even within seconds."

He had slipped up right behind Jim, speaking directly into his ear. Hot, chocolate-sweet breath washed against Jim's cheek.

"The creature may struggle, but this is useless. It only sinks deeper, caught-- sucked down by the trap. Slowly, slowly..."

The warmth radiating off Salik's body was palpable, even in the club's sweltering heat.

"...it sinks. The mud surrounds its body completely, hot and wet."

Salik breathed the last three words, leaving Jim in no doubt that his word choice had been entirely intentional. He felt Salik shift even closer, nearly kissing Jim's ear. Jim's knuckles were white on the edge of the bar.

"After a time, the creature finally grows weaker. All its strength is consumed, all its energy used up, leaving it quivering, exhausted, and quite... spent."

The length of Salik's body was lean and hard, fitting tightly against Jim's back. Short of breath, Jim inhaled sharply and pushed back. Every muscle in his body was tight and trembling; his head was starting to feel stupid with lust. Each inhaling press of Salik's chest against his back only made Jim increasingly aware how long it had been since he'd had another body for a night.

"As it gasps for air, sulpherous fumes cloud the creature's mind, dizzying. Slowly, inexorably, the mud drags it down, pressing in heavier. Hotter. Thick and sticky and sweltering... searing..."

By the time Salik purred the last word, both of them were breathing raggedly. One of Salik's hands had come up to cover Jim's, threading his digits between Jim's and pressing his palm so hard against the bar's surface that Jim's fingertips were bloodless. Salik's other hand was tight on Jim's hip, holding the two of them tightly together. Caught in the rhythm of Salik's words, they were rocking slowly against each other, swaying slightly, hips grinding in agonisingly slow tandem.

"...until it is done," Salik finished, his voice barely a whisper.

Jim shuddered hard. Struggling to regain his breath, he pried his eyes open, finding it hard to see straight for a moment. His legs-- his legs were kind of wobbly, to be honest. Swallowing, he began thickly, "You know, you really--"

Out of the corner of his eye, he barely caught the flash of Salik's sudden grin before the Romulan licked his ear, planted a wet kiss against the side of his face, said cheerfully, "See you around, then," and fucking _vanished_.

Caught between outrage and disbelief, Jim jerked upright and whipped around. A couple of people nearby, most of whom had been surreptitiously watching the couple flagrantly entwined with each other in plain sight of the whole club, looked on with gleefully raised eyebrows or homologous features at Salik's sudden departure. Jim snarled at two of the nearest and snatched his drink up from the bar, pounding back the rest.

"Fucking bastard," he said out loud, disbelieving. Half hard in his pants, Jim turned back to the bar, shifting a little to ease the discomfort. "Fucking _bastard_."

Abruptly, the night seemed spoiled. It seemed that nothing was going to go right for him. Even the prospect of fucking some other willing and presumably gorgeous being no longer held any appeal if said being wasn't an exotic, long-limbed Romulan in black leather with smouldering catlike eyes and perfect cocksucking lips painted deep green.

Yet more furious with the fact that Salik had managed to ruin his chances to get laid without even being there, Jim sharply signalled the bartender droid over and reached for his wallet, intending to pay for his drinks and go sulk aboardship.

Jim felt about in his pocket for a good three seconds before realisation hit him.

His wallet wasn't there.

"_Fucking bastard_!" he roared, whirling and stomping away from the bar. Where the _fuck _had that pocket-picking cocktease slid off to? Romulan strength or not, Jim was going to break his pretty fucking _face_, put a fist into his nose and then snap a few fingers for good measure, and maybe then the bastard would learn who the fuck he was _dealing _with. There was a goddamn _reason _that no less than sixteen Ferengi traders that side of Alpha Nemori refused to handle Jim's cargo shipments any more, and it wasn't because he got the goods through fast with a smile and tip of the hat.

Shoving his way through a bouncing knot of Sulamids, Jim took a staircase up to the second-level catwalk at a bound. One hand clenched tight on his belt knife, Jim stalked down the catwalk, staring intently down at the crowded dance floor. The club was packed, every inch of the floor jammed with beings of all shapes and sizes; Salik couldn't have gotten to the door already. If he throught he was going to just slip away...

"There you are," Jim hissed.

Salik's tall, black-clad figure was unmistakable as he tried to push his way through the jam of brightly dressed beings, his beeline movement disrupting the flow of the crowd. Jim lunged for the nearest staircase. Eschewing the steps entirely, he braced his hands against the railings and slid down them as easily as he did in any engineering bay, shooting off the last step at a speed that nearly flattened several nearby dancers. Jim ignored their protests and drove into the crowd.

Ahead of him, barely visible through the churning mass, Salik happened to glance back. Jim saw his eyes widen with surprise, and shoved forward harder as the Romulan tried to escape into the crowd. Not fucking _likely_!

"Not injure/harm, please immediate regard/attention self position now!" somebody snapped at him in holophrastic speech.

Jim elbowed the alien in the approximate position of a human gut and stomped past. The next second he was shoved from behind, sending him stumbling into another being; pushed back again with a furious shout, Jim staggered against a group of swaying Cardassians. He rebounded off the tightly packed bodies, swearing loudly. The back of Salik's head had vanished into the crowd.

Then the music changed, and suddenly the grooving crowd began to surge. Hundreds of throats let out a roar of approval at the new song, apparently some popular tune that was nothing more than a deep, grinding bass line. It made the dance borderline violent, the floor growing tighter as people rushed to dance, every one of them leaping and surging back and forth in crushing unison to a pattern that Jim didn't know, couldn't predict.

As loudly as he could, Jim let out a frustrated string of cursing in virulent Klingon. Startled and frightened by the language of a notoriously violent species, the crowd immediately surrounding Jim fell back without realising that it came from a human. He pushed forward again, squirming out of the knot and back in the direction he had seen Salik heading towards.

Half blinded by the strobes and still being knocked about by the throbbing crowd, Jim tried to find Salik's head in the crowd again, to no avail. Twenty feet from where he'd lost Salik, he stopped and turned in a full circle. Where-- _where _had he--

"Oh, you fucker," Jim growled, unable to believe the alien's audacity.

Barely ten steps away, Salik was plastered up against a burly, seven foot-tall Orion male, grinding back hard on the body pressed against him from behind. The Orion was clearly loving it, his head tipped back and his eyes closed as Salik fucking _frotted _him; Salik, on the other hand, was evidently not paying attention to the dance at all even though he was moving through it perfectly. His eyes kept sweeping the area, searching.

When he spotted Jim, his eyes narrowed. Without a word, Salik reached forward, grabbed the wrist of a second Orion male dancing nearby and pulled him over, shimmying and writhing between the two until they were turned on enough to sandwich Salik tight between the two of them, both gripping his hips and working against him together in the unspoken agreement of mutual horniness that dicated any piece of meat that slutty ought to be shared as far as it was willing.

Jim's lip curled. _You think a couple of horny lunks are going to keep me away_?

Smiling with his teeth, Jim stepped up to the trio. Salik glared, silently ordering Jim not to start anything-- _Not in public, not here. You wouldn't dare_, he seemed to say. Instead, Jim reached over and tapped one of the Orions on the arm.

"_That's my whore you're dry-fucking_," he informed the man in sinuous Orion, the language pretty much a simple mash of sex-related colloquialisms. "_He's a slut, I know, but I'd like him back. He doesn't deserve to be passed around tonight_."

The male laughed loudly and slapped a meaty hand across Jim's back. "_Yours? Get him a leash_," he suggested. "_Or a collar at least. I can get you one for a good price. He'll never run again_."

Jim was smiling so hard that his face hurt. Fucking _slavers_. There, of all places-- of all the clubs on Vulcan, the only two goddamn Syndicate slave traders inside the Free Space blockade were _right _where Jim fucking was. "_I can make sure of that with a whip for twenty credits less. Give him here, please_."

Salik's eyes were darting with some combination of alarm and confusion as the two Orions shoved him at Jim. When Jim locked his arms around Salik's waist and grabbed a double fistful of his jacket, he began to struggle immediately.

"Don't speak Orion?" Jim hissed in his ear. "Translation: Shut up and dance with me or these two'll have you on a slave ship to Terra before tomorrow morning."

Salik's nostrils flared. Glaring, he reluctantly complied but slid his own arms around Jim, digging his thumbs under the waistband of Jim's jeans and gripping the denim in tight fists, impossible to escape.

"You son of a bitch," Jim whispered harshly, his lips nearly touching Salik's ear.

The Romulan jerked furiously. He had displayed enough dancing skill earlier that Jim knew the booted foot that smashed down on his toes was entirely deliberate. Letting out a snarl, Jim bit down on Salik's earlobe. Salik barely swallowed a noise, keening in his throat.

"Give it back," Jim growled.

Somebody ran into him from behind, knocking him against Salik. About to trip over his own tangled feet completely, Jim was only saved by Salik's strong grip hauling him back upright.

"_Get _it back," Salik challenged, tight-lipped. Hardened with anger and defiance, his alien face was weird and glorious in the strobing light, bronze-green shimmering on his milky skin. Jim was close enough to smell the sweet talcum powder of the makeup and the chocolate still on Salik's breath.

"If that's the way you want it," said Jim, and took one hand from Salik's jacket, plunging it between their bodies for his knife.

Abruptly Salik yanked Jim hard to him, trapping Jim's arm between them. Literally holding on for dear life, he pressed his body against Jim as tightly as he could. Cool and arrogant as his eyes usually were, there was something frightened in them. Not quite ready to take on a man willing to use his knife, then?

Jim sneered. "Oh, baby, yeah, give it to me like that." He thrust his pelvis against Salik, rubbing their crotches together with a lewd groan. The Romulan looked at him in disgust but was forced to endure it, unable to release Jim and free his knife hand.

Out of the corner of his eye, Jim noted the two Orions still lingering nearby, watching them. Salik's eyes darted, taking in the same thing. They locked gazes at the same time. Whatever they did, Salik would have no choice but to stay with Jim, at least for the time being. His display earlier had unwittingly made him an extremely attractive target for a pair of flesh traders, and they wouldn't be likely to give him up so easily.

Jim grinned mirthlessly. With the hand at Salik's back, he shucked up the Romulan's jacket and shirt, seeking out the waistband of his pants. His sweaty fingertips skidded against the surprisingly dry skin of Salik's lower back.

"Stop it," Salik snapped immediately, his back going ramrod stiff.

"Give it to me," Jim retorted. When Salik made no immediate reply, he began to edge his fingers down past the waistband, knuckles scraped harshly by the tight leather. He felt the Romulan shudder. Gritting his teeth against the pain of Salik's boots coming down on his feet again and again, Jim shoved his hand down farther.

"I insist you halt immediately!" Salik snarled, deep on the harsh vocal cords in his chest. He was practically standing on Jim's feet, bearing down with all his weight.

"Steel-toed boots, bitch," Jim hissed. Barely damp enough to move, his middle finger squirmed into the crack between Salik's asscheeks. Jim curled it inwards with a stifled grunt of effort, pushing hard against the dry pucker. Salik's entire body ratcheted tenser yet; trapped in Jim's arms, he twitched and jerked, making a desperate whining sound in his throat as Jim's nails dug into his tender flesh. "_Give it to me_."

Salik plunged a hand into his own jacket so fast that Jim was nearly knocked back off his feet. Green-swept eyes glittering ferally, he thrust Jim's wallet over. "_Misf'ka_," he grated hoarsely, and though Jim didn't know the language, he didn't need a translation.

Jim thumbed the back of his wallet, noticing immediately that it was too thin. "The starter chip!"

"_Fuck you_."

Too late, Jim realised that both his hands were occupied, one with his wallet and the other still down Salik's pants. Faster than he could reach for his knife, Salik seized his wrist in a crushing grip so tight that Jim felt his metacarpals grinding together. The Romulan's face was rigid and bloodless with rage.

Agony flared white behind Jim's eyes. His knees started to buckle. In the silent, utterly clear bubble of pain, he knew that, at the rate the pressure was increasing, he had less than five seconds before his wrist snapped. Every instinct that had ever served him in a fight kicked into overdrive.

In nearly the same movement, Jim lunged down and bit his wallet out of his trapped hand, and ripped his other out of Salik's pants, forming it into a fist. When the alien let go of his jeans and moved to grab that wrist, too, Jim threw himself backwards. He slammed into a nearby dancer and kept his feet, while Salik was yanked off balance and missed catching his wrist. Teeth bared, Jim rammed his fist into Salik's side, just below the ribcage, with all his strength.

A human had no vulnerable organs in that location. A vulcanoid kept his kidneys there.

Wallet jammed between his teeth, Jim had no voice for a parting shot. Instead, while Salik was doubled over, Jim thrust a hand into the other man's jacket and tore his card-folder out. Then he turned tail and bolted, knocking unsuspecting dancers to the floor without slowing a step.

Salik was the only one in danger from the Orions, not Jim. He frankly didn't give a flying fuck what happened to the bastard now.

Clear of the dance floor, Jim skidded through a door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY. He found himself in a dim back hallway, the music of the club suddenly muted to a dull booming as the door clicked shut behind him. His harsh panting was very audible in the quiet.

Gulping for breath, Jim jogged down the hallway, then walked, then slowed to a stop entirely once he was out of sight of the door. He spat his wallet out and shoved it deep into an inside pocket of his jacket, the one he usually reserved for getting a handy flask of Romulan ale or two past Free Space customs. In the pool of illumination nearest a dim light pod, Jim flipped Salik's card-folder open.

Plain plastic, eight slots, five of which were filled. One held the _Number One_'s starter chip, which Jim pocketed immediately, cursing his own carelessness. The other slots held an assortment of innocuous datachips-- a library card to the Archives of Surak, a 63% full datasolid, a grounds pass for the Vulcan Planetary Aeronautics History Museum, a college ID-- but what made Jim's eyebrows shoot up was the name they were all registered to.

"S'chn T'gai Spock," he said out loud, staring into the holographic eyes of the bland-faced Vulcan pictured on the ID. The cold holo didn't at all resemble the gorgeous, scorching reality; it didn't capture a hint of the vitality in Spock's emerald-shadowed leopard eyes, all but spitting fire. Disbelieving, Jim muttered, "You son of a _bitch_."

A hand closed around his throat and slammed him into the wall so hard that Jim saw stars.

Breathing hard, Salik-- _Spock_\-- glared down into Jim's eyes. "Never say that again," he ground out in a whisper, the words cold with fury.

Choking for air, Jim clawed uselessly at the hand around his throat. He lashed out with one leg, hoping to get Spock in the knee, but Spock deftly avoided the blow. Instead, he stepped closer to Jim, shoving a knee between his legs and rendering him unable to kick at anything helpful.

Jim made a wet gurgling sound, thrashing weakly. His eyes began to roll up, the light pod overhead blurring as water welled up in them. His whole body was throbbing with oxygen deprivation, every cell screaming for air; each frantic pulse of his heart thudded in his ears, sending uselessly deoxygenated blood pounding through his veins, which seemed to tighten in desperation with every passing second.

White-lipped with rage, Spock contined to bear down. His merciless eyes bore into Jim, unblinking.

Tasting blood in his mouth as his vision started to darken, Jim peeled his lips back in a fierce, feral deathgrin and imagined his ship one last time.

_Motherfucker_, he thought in disappointment, _they're gonna have to replace the captain _and _the first officer_.

And, just as Jim was about to thrash out his last bit of strength, Spock let him go.

His knees gave way. Scarlet exploded behind Jim's eyes as oxygenated blood surged back into every cell in his body, blinding him temporarily in a rush of stress chemicals and endorphins.

When Jim came to again, he found himself collapsed against Spock's shoulder, hanging limply in the Vulcan's arms and wheezing like a winded horse. Head lolling back, he blinked water out of his eyes and looked into Spock's face. The shadows of his makeup were deepened by the dim lighting, his alien features stretched, leaving his eyes like fathomless black pits. But for all the lack of expression on Spock's face, Jim could see even through the blur that there was fire there.

Jim's mouth widened in a slack grin. "...Fucking... goddamn... liar..."

The Vulcan's face didn't twitch. "I could say the same of you, _James Tiberius Kirk_."

Jim's next breath was a sharp hiss. "...How... did you...?"

"First Officer James T Kirk, of the rebel ship _Number One_, captained by Christopher H Pike. Wanted by the Terran-Orion Union for false declaration of identity, smuggling, assault, multiple assaults on Union officers, conspiracy to commit murder, the kidnapping of sixty-eight Union citizens, the theft of no less than three starships and various acts of war on the Union. Are you unaware that you are a _very _wanted man?"

As he began to get control of his body once again, Jim's breathing evened out, his ribs pushing against Spock's with each heavy breath. His heart was still racing, but his mind had gone hard and clear. "No, I know it. And obviously you know it too."

The razor-sharp tip of his knife dug into Spock's side, right over his heart, spilling a thin trickle of blood. The Vulcan froze instantly.

"So I guess you understand, then, that I'm a _motherfucking pirate_," Jim snarled, eyes flashing murderously. "What the hell are _you_?"

Spock's expression was utterly fearless. "In need of a job."

For a long time, they stared each other down. Jim's unblinking eyes raked over Spock's face, taking in every line and tension, weighing him for weakness or hesitation. There was none. Chest to chest, they stood locked in a stand off, both waiting for the other to give.

Jim broke the impasse at last, a mocking sneer cracking over his face.

"You don't say," he purred. Delicately, he teased the tip of his knife in the wound. Through the hand on Spock's side he felt a shiver, but the Vulcan's face didn't flinch. "And-- let me get this straight-- you thought you'd start your career in piracy by stealing credits from a _pirate_?"

"Actually, I meant to steal your ship," Spock admitted shamelessly. At Jim's raised eyebrows, he went on. "This is hardly the start of my career in piracy, only my first foray into larger circles. I have a contact in planetary traffic control that informed me the moment the _Number One_ made berth in spacedock 19. I then got the location that you were transported down to-- here, in Sdvaar-- and arrived in time to follow the last one to beam down-- you. My intention was to get the starter chip, beam up to spacedock, board the _Number One_ and incapacitate the remaining skeleton crew on board."

"And if there'd been ten of us aboard?"

"There could not have been. Seven people beamed down Sdvaar, and the _Number One_ is a _Rivertam_-class cruiser, crewed by ten at the very most. Taking her from spacedock would have been simple, even for a single person."

"So you could take off into the black all on your own? Even I know that's a shitty plan, and I've had some bad ones."

Spock looked at him scornfully. "Hardly. Christopher Pike is known to be impressed by bold, seemingly reckless acts, particularly those based on actual high chances of success. I have analysed his past most thoroughly. I was going to trade the _Number One_ back in exchange for a place on the crew, preferably either as your replacement or the navigator's."

Jim ground his teeth together. It was a fucking good plan, he had to admit. One he'd have been proud to come up with himself-- one he'd probably use on somebody else, in the future, even. But Spock had ripped open so many fresh wounds that he had no idea just how pissed Jim was.

"Tough shit," he growled. "Pike's not the captain any more."

The Vulcan's eyebrows shot up, betraying his first hint of dismay. "He is dead?"

"He retired," Jim gritted out. Yeah, _retired_\-- a hole the size of Jim's fist blown through his side, slug venom burning holes into his spinal column. The memory of Pike, raped and shattered and insensate in the brig of the Union battleship that Jim had wrecked the _One _going up against, was almost enough to make Jim senseless with fury all over again. "I'm the captain now, not that it means jack _shit_\-- the _Number One_'s probably never gonna fly again."

Spock regarded him coolly for almost ten seconds. "Then you need a first officer," he said at last, simply.

His face twisting with sudden rage, Jim shoved the knife a little deeper into Spock's side, not noticing the alien's tiny flinch. He couldn't see straight, couldn't breathe, couldn't _think_\--

"You-- you stupid, idiotic, thoughtless, whoremongering, cock-sucking, _arrogant_\--"

Very abruptly, he stopped. He could hear those exact words echoed by other voices, Pike and Uhura and Bones berating him over and over in his memory. Breathing heavily, he stared at Spock for a very long time.

"--arrogant, talented, brilliant asshole," Jim finished slowly. Despite everything, a glow of understanding kindled in his chest, a kind of grudging admiration along with wary respect. "You've... you've got _balls_, you know that?"

Spock returned the thinnest sliver of a smirk. "Every way but literally."

Jim withdrew his knife. It was slick with green blood, the same shade as the shimmer on Spock's lips. He looked down at it for a moment, then caught Spock's eyes and deliberately let it drop on the ground.

"I think I could hate your guts, but you're my kind of asshole. Still want that job?"

The Vulcan arched a single sardonic eyebrow, saying quite clearly, _You have to ask_?

"You said you've got contacts. Can you get us a ship?"

A keen, thoughtful look distancing his expression, Spock nodded after a moment. "Yes."

Jim wasn't anywhere near happy enough to grin, but he managed a tight, grim smile when he took Spock's hand. A spark ignited between them, Spock's eyes going intense once more as Jim shook his hand, taking a moment to stroke his thumb deliberately over the Vulcan's knuckles. "Then welcome to our little... enterprise, Mr Spock."


End file.
